The Last Language: A Novel

(Hardback)

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From Jennifer duBois, one of a handful of living American novelists who can comprehend both the long arc of history and the minute details that animate it (Karan Mahajan) and a writer of thrilling psychological precision (Justin Torres), comes a gripping new novel.

In 2001, a few months after the death of her husband, Angela is devastated when she is ejected from her graduate program in linguistics at Harvard University. Soon after, she suffers a miscarriage. Spinning and raw, and with suppressed unresolved trauma, the young widow and her four-year-old child move into her mothers house.

Trained with an understanding of spoken language as the essential foundation of thought, Angela finds underpaid work at the Center, a fledgling organization utilizing an experimental therapy aimed at helping nonspeaking patients with motor impairments. Through the Center, Angela begins to work closely with Sam, a twenty-eight-year-old patient who has been confined to his bedroom for most of his life. Sam quickly takes to the technologyand so does Angela. Her once deeply philosophical interest in language comes vividly to life through her interactions with Sam. Angela becomes intensely drawn to him, and their relationship soon turns intimate.

When Sams family discovers their relationship, they intervene and bring charges. As Angela tells her story from prison in the form of an unrepentant plea, we are plunged into the inner workings of her mind as she rejects all else in pursuit of a more profound understanding of language and humanity. As the sole narrator and perspective giver, Angelas understanding pushes and pulls us into ambiguity, and a Nabokovian hall of mirrors emerges as she tumbles deeper and deeper into obsession.

Provocative and profound in its exploration of the basis of humanity, this is an extraordinary novel from one of our most acclaimed contemporary writers.

Reviews

Praise for The Last Language

The Last Languageexplores how language can both create our reality and utterly fail to capture it. As we fall deeply into the mind of the narrator, with her brilliance, humor, and humanity, duBois masterfully allows us to live in the ambiguities that the characters fiercely reject. A hauntingly beautiful, darkly comic, and unforgettable novel.Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas

Praise for The Spectators

This contemporary tragedy, shot through with comic energy and a quiet, radical hope, has arrived at precisely the right moment. DuBois is a brilliant writer, and I could read her sentences forever.Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!

Jennifer DuBois is one of a handful of living American novelists who can comprehend both the long arc of history and the minute details that animate it. The Spectators is yet another triumph in an impressive oeuvre: a brave and painfully vivid excavation of the AIDS crisis in New York that, with its fine prose, breathes life back into an era of death.Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs: A Novel

Jennifer duBois is a wonderful writerfunny and humane, generous and wiseand The Spectators is a searing and moving examination of our cultures obsession with celebrity and the public persona. With penetrating wit and psychological acuity, duBois has created one of the most complicated and memorable characters Ive read in years. A brilliant and propulsive bookI loved it.Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans: Stories

Another breathtaking novel from one of our most brilliant writers. No on writes about the contradictions of American society and the foibles of the human heart with such incisive wit and sensitivity. The Spectators is a tense and propulsive exploration of how easily we can let our best intentions slip away. As secrets are uncovered, Jennifer duBois reminds us that to truly see, without apology or artifice, is itself an act of compassion. This novel pulses with intelligence and heart.Kirstin Valdez Quade, author of The Five Wounds

The Spectators is Jennifer duBoiss ambitious and assured novel that strives to answer the question: What tragedies deserve to be told Each sentence is more beautiful than the last, every line of dialogue sharper and funnier. I savored it all.Mandy Berman, author of The Learning Curve: A Novel

Only a writer with the easy, exquisite intellect of Jennifer duBois could render the slow debasement of individuals and the groups they comprise with such authenticity and compassion, and make the experience of reading it all such a pleasure. I was awed and humbled by every page.Xhenet Aliu, author of Brass: A Novel

A masterpiece, The Spectators is a thrilling high-wire act. Combining a symphonic structure with unflinching psychological insight, this gorgeous novel explores the ways in which we betray and redeem one anotherhow we tell each others stories and, in doing so, discover our own. Jennifer duBois is one of this generations singular talents.Mary Helen Specht, author of Migratory Animals: A Novel

Every page is so brilliant, and every character so irreverent, that youll hardly realize what you have in your hands is a passionate love story unfolding against the backdrop of a lost world. As you weave among ghosts, the witticisms turn into laments, then prayers, and through it all the writing is so damn good.Deb Olin Unferth, author of Happy Green Family

Praise for Cartwheel

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by

Slate, Cosmopolitan, Salon, BookPage, Buzzfeed, and Guernica

Like its namesake, Cartwheel will upend you; rarely does a novel this engaging ring so true. Inscribed with the emotional intimacy of memory, this is one story you will not soon forget.T. Geronimo Johnson, author of The Vain Conversation: A Novel

Cartwheel is so gripping, so fantastically evocative, that I could not, would not, put it down. Jennifer duBois is a writer of thrilling psychological precision. She dares to pause a moment, digging into the mess of crime and accusation, culture and personality, the known and unknown, and coming up with a sensational novel of profound depth.Justin Torres, author of We the Animals

Psychologically astute and dangerously funny . . . The writing in Cartwheel is a pleasure: electric, fine-tuned, intelligent, conflicted.New York Times

[T]he emotional intelligence in Cartwheel is so sharp its almost ruthlessa tabloid tragedy elevated to high art. A-.Entertainment Weekly

Provocative, meaningful, and suspenseful. [A] page-turner.Chicago Tribune

Cartwheel can only be read at a manic, stay-up-all-night kind of pace. . .Utterly engrossing.Austin Review

With Cartwheel, Ms. duBois makes herself heir to the great novelists of the past.Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

From the first page, duBois intelligent, penetrating writing makes this sad story captivating.Dallas Morning News

Sure-footed and psychologically calibrated. . .Reviewers of duBois first novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, called it brainy and beautiful, a verdict that fits this successor.Newsday

Masterful. . .A compelling, carefully crafted, and, most importantly, satisfying novel.Bustle.com

Praise for A Partial History of Lost Causes

Named by the National Book Foundation as a 5 Under 35 Author

Finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Prize for Debut Fiction

Winner of the California Book Award Gold Medal for First Fiction

Winner of the Northern California Book Award for Fiction

Hilarious and heartbreaking and a triumph of the imagination. Jennifer duBois is too young to be this talented. I wish I were her.Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends: A Novel

Astonishingly beautiful and brainy . . . [a] stunning novel.O: Oprah Magazine

I cant remember reading another novelat least not recentlythats both incredibly intelligent and also emotionally engaging.Nancy Pearl, National Public Radio

Precise and unsentimentalSpinning an ambitious plot, unpredictable but never improbable, [duBois] moves with a magicians control between points of view, continents, histories, and sympathies.New Yorker

A terrific debut.Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Gorgeous. DuBois writes with haunting richness and fierce intelligence. A Partial History of Lost Causes is a thrilling debut by a young writer who evidently shares the uncanny brilliance of her protagonists.Elle

Tender but sharp-edged. . .Irinas voice possesses a grim humor and quiet determination that is nothing short of charismatic.Daily Beast

An ambitious and remarkably assured work. . .That its characters remain humane, funny, and relatable throughout a thorny tale of Eastern bloc politics is a tribute to the authors exciting, formidable talent.TimeOut New York

A Partial History of Lost Causes seems to assert that everything we strive for in life is likely to be, ultimately, a lost cause. But then why is the book so beautiful, so hopeful, so full of life The beauty, hope, and vitality are all conveyed in the telling of this gorgeous story, rather than in the outcome. Such an important book coming from such a young writer should give us all hope in the glorious lost cause of American fiction.David Mallmann at Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon, WI

[A] mesmerizing debut. A tour de force.Bookreporter.com

Author Bio

Jennifer duBoisis the author ofThe Last Language. Her first novel,A Partial History of Lost Causes, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and winner of the California Book Award for First Work of Fiction. Soon after its publication, duBois received a Whiting Award and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award. Her second novel,Cartwheel,was a finalist for the New York Public Librarys Young Lions Fiction Award and the winner of the Housatonic Book Award. And her third novel,The Spectators, was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and the Stanford University Stegner Fellowship, duBois teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University. She lives in Austin.